


At The End Of The Road

by PFDiva



Series: Girl Genius Event Week [5]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Confusion, Gen, Moloch drinking shit he really shouldn't, Sort-of Fluff, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 18:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16269782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PFDiva/pseuds/PFDiva
Summary: Moloch drinks something he probably shouldn't have, and that's not even the worst of his problems.





	At The End Of The Road

**Author's Note:**

> Day five of the Girl Genius Event Week: Jaegerdraught/Poison
> 
> I need to thank the GG Discord for helping me with jaegers:
> 
> Tarmak Sterndrive for helping me find the canon jaegers Grishnarf and Shadsnaf, who are property of the Foglios and Girl Genius  
> Darlighl contributed Lil Grigor, Vati, Big Grigor, and Sasha (No relation to the minion from day 2)  
> Kite provided Rahela  
> Luunyscarlet gave me Elizaveta, nicknamed Veta.

Moloch picked himself up in a huff. He'd just been planning to leave the Castle, go find himself some dinner somewhere that wasn't _actively_ hostile, and maybe get a few hours of sleep. Next thing he knew, the floor had opened up on him and he was on his ass in front of one of Agatha's labs.

He knew it was one of Agatha's because it was covered in clank detritus, rather than the aviator or biological in Gil's. There was nothing like seeing a real kidney growing in a tank to put you off kidney beans for a month.

Agatha and Tarvek shared a proclivity for clankwork, so Tarvek's labs should have looked similar to hers, but Muses were delicate sparkwork and Agatha only dealt in functional mechanics. Also Tarvek was the most repressed spark Moloch ever had the good fortune to work with. He actually kept his workrooms neat.

So Moloch knew this was one of Agatha's labs, but not which one. The Castle had been repaired for years now, and only attacked people inside it on purpose.

"Only" wasn't saying much when dealing with a sapient city equipped with a sadistic sense of humor.

Moloch didn't know all of the wonder trio's labs and didn't _want_ to. Tarvek kept half of his secret out of habit, Agatha just forgot where she put stuff and would have seven versions of the same project across five labs. Gil had Zoing, so he stayed on task more often than not, but it was still a trial.

Down the hall, he could just see Agatha being herded around the corner by a pair of jagers: Rahela and Big Grigor.

Big Grigor was about half a foot shorter than Little Grigor, but Moloch wasn't about to argue with jaegers, especially jaegers that had Rahela with them. Rahela liked hitting things.

Considering who was taking her away, one of the jaegers was probably hurt. Maybe Little Grigor ate something they needed again. That, or Veta had managed to make a jaeger chorus. In which case _many_ jaegers were hurt. Wasn't his business.

"Why am I here, you useless load of rubble?" Moloch demanded of the ceiling as he entered and carefully navigated through Agatha's lab.

"I have plans to kill you in the most painful way possible and revive you with significant alterations to your personality and appearance in order to make you more likable," said the Castle.

Moloch reflexively picked up one of Agatha's large wrenches as he stepped between tables to change his route through the room. If the Castle was going to actively do something to harm him, it would have just done it, so Moloch wasn't _very_ concerned. But better safe than sorry.

"She left absolutely everything on in here--it's like she _wants_ to lose all her work in explosions and fire," Moloch said, griping to himself. She could be back in twenty minutes or ten days and one of those would spell disaster.

He began deactivating things that could be deactivated, cutting the power to things that had power sources but no shut-off switch. If they were that sensitive, she wouldn't have been distracted until they weren't, and she could remake anything that she'd forgotten was sensitive.

Near the back of the room, he found what Agatha had been working on: some kind of slightly glowing hooch.

She didn't even drink alcohol on a regular basis, so this was a surprise.

"Glowing alcohol!" he scoffed, "Have I mentioned that sparks are idiots and put way too much effort into shit that doesn't need to be an effort?"

"Have I mentioned that you're much more enjoyable when you don't speak?"

This sounded like the prelude to real danger, so Moloch ducked and rolled under the hooch table, defensively holding the wrench out between him and whatever was going to come out of the wall following that.

When the only thing he got was the Castle's malicious laughter, he heaved a sigh and slowly climbed out from under the table.

He was so done with this place, he didn't know what to do with himself. He was going to leave this town and get the fuck on with his life. It'd have to wait a month while the repairs on Tiny Monster Island were underway, but then he was _gone._

Moloch picked up the small beaker of Agatha's liquor. It had a strange texture, almost fleshy for all that it was transparent (and glowing). She must have been working on solid liquids or something like that. She was always trying to find better ways for people to do things. Sometimes, she even succeeded.

Moloch took a swig.

It was a bad habit that had ended horribly for him on a number of occasions, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. If he saw something that looked drinkable, down the hatch it went. And spending too much time in Mechanicsburg had started to give him _weird_ ideas on what qualified as drinkable.

Like this shit.

Which was wiggly and unpleasantly thick and tasted like a chemical burn. The taste was about par for the course for moonshine, so he couldn't complain.

But it was also chewy.

Moloch had figured he could bite this fist-sized amount of what was apparently moonshine made solid-ish, but that didn't seem to be the case.

Unfortunately for him, he'd already attempted to swallow a good portion of it before he realized this fact.

Moloch had no gag reflex to speak of--which was a fact he didn't share with 90% of people. This usually meant that he could eat stuff that would distress lesser humans. It also meant that when he had a fist-sized amount of wiggle moving down his throat, he literally _couldn't_ puke it back up.

Since he didn't want to suffocate, he swallowed and kept swallowing until his airways cleared.

It was a long time.

Somehow, he managed to put the beaker down without breaking it and when his airways were finally clear, he gasped for air. Eventually, he managed to catch his breath.

That had been a mistake. He didn't even feel drunker.

"You're not dead," the Castle said, sounding put out.

"It'll take more than some overdone liquor to take me out," Moloch said with a wheeze, working his way back towards the door.

He put Agatha's wrench back down and had gained the doorway when she returned, fugueing about vocal harmonics and death rays (as always). At some point, she'd left Rahela and Little Grigor, only to return with Oggie and Shadsnaf, who were punching each other in the shoulders like children.

Agatha nearly ran into Moloch, then lit up at the sight of him, " _Moloch!_ I need--!"

"Nope," he said, his voice strident with the declaration and raspy from the abuse his throat had endured, "Whatever it is, I'm not doing it. I'm off-duty, I haven't even had _dinner_ and that hooch you were trying to make solid nearly took me out."

Shadsnaf continued trying to punch Oggie, but Oggie was giving Moloch a piercing look.

"Solid....hooch?" Agatha said, looking more than a little confused.

Moloch gestured to the back of the room, "Liquor, but in solid form? In a beaker?  Glowing?"

Agatha's eyes widened in alarm as she realized what he was talking about, "You _drank_ that?"

"Yeah? Had a good kick, but mostly it just tried to suffocate me--maybe make it a little _less_ solid next time?" Her face fell.

Oggie was visibly muffling laughter into Shadsnaf's shoulder. Shadsnaf just grinned like a moron and looked at Moloch like he was about to do something interesting.

Agatha unhappily circled Moloch, "Nothing happened? At all?"

"Besides nearly suffocating? No."

"I must not have used enough..." She swept out of the room before she could finish that sentence. Oggie immediately proceeded to _howl_ with laughter. Shadsnaf wasn't as loud about their laughter, but there was still a lot of it.

Moloch went home.

Two days later, he caught a cold. Fever, muscle aches, tension headache, the whole works. He kept working, because the sooner he got shit done, the better, but it was a bad time. At least General Gkika came around a lot. In spite of the color changing, she was a fine figure of a woman. Moloch didn't want anything from or with her, but he wasn't above looking.

Unfortunately for him, none of her remedies really worked? He just felt miserable and there was nothing to be done about it. After a week, he was annoyed. After a month, he was ready to fight.

Agatha was, of course, incredibly apologetic, but also chided him to avoid drinking random things he found around her lab--he might drink something caustic and then where would he be?

Considering the fact that Moloch had yet to consume something caustic, he wasn't particularly concerned.

After six months of being sick as a dog, Moloch was ready to fight Agatha herself, and could never seem to catch up to her. The day he finally decided to search her out, he woke up feeling fresh as a spring daisy. Out of the blue. It was like a miracle.

He got a new batch of minions about then and they were all weak little bastards from saints only knew where. They couldn't lift anything, they were only _barely_ fast enough to avoid the castle's traps, and they gawked at Moloch when he helped them out. Which he had to do a lot because they were also idiots.

They stressed him out so much that he noticed his hair beginning to turn white in patches. The fact that his teeth were falling out and coming back in _sharp_ did nothing to improve his mood or his graying hair. He showed Tarvek his white hair in frustration and just got a look of blankly amused confusion and an amiable nod for his complaint. Goddamned sparks.

In the months Moloch had been sick, he'd been plagued by jaegers, and they only got worse after he recovered. They tried to hang out with him and chat with him and he was going to kill one of them if they didn't stop.

Between the newbies and the jaegers, it wasn't long before Moloch found himself snarling his way down the streets of Mechanicsburg, trying to avoid biting his own mouth to ribbons. Tourists paled and backed away, while Mechanicsburgers, some he even knew, just gave him bemused looks.

He finally ended up in a part of town he didn't spend a lot of time in. It wouldn't have been unusual, except for the fact that there was a little girl making flower crowns out of some rather dangerous-looking flowers. They kept trying to bite her, but she had them well in hand. Moloch watched her for a while, stunned all over again by How Fucking Weird Mechanicsburg was.

Eventually, the girl noticed him and held up one of her flower crowns, "Want one, Herr Jaeger?"

Moloch turned to snarl at the jaeger she was addressing, and found noone besides an annoyed townie pushing a cart of cabbages.

The little girl giggled.

Moloch looked at the girl again, "Wot are hyu laffink at?"

"You're funny," she declared, still giggling as she got up with her bitey flower crown, "And poppa always says be nice to funny jaegers."

"Hy'm not a jaeger," Moloch objected. The girl curiously canted her head at him.

"You look like one." Then she looked horrified, "You're not a _fake_ , are you? You're gonna get in _trouble~!_ "

"Hy am chust a regular mechanic," Moloch protested, getting annoyed.

The girl dropped her flower crown and took off at a dead run, screaming for her mother about a fake jaeger.

Well.

Fuck.

Moloch went back to the Castle. He hadn't actually seen Agatha in a few months, and he had a horrible premonition.

She did a doubletake when she saw him, "I thought I'd met every jaeger…."

"Hy am Moloch," he growled, and her face lit up.

"It _did_ work!" Agatha exclaimed in delight.

"Wot are hyu talking about?" Moloch yelled back. Agatha bounced to her feet and he grabbed her, because he'd be damned if she ran off before she explained things. Again.

In grabbing Agatha, Moloch moved faster than either of them expected, and they both gaped at his hand about her wrist for a minute. Then he yanked her closer to yell in her face.

"Explain dis to me right NOW!"

She smelled unexpectedly nice. Something in Moloch's chest flipped over. Not like falling in love or nausea, but he wanted to smell more of her, stay close. It was a strange impulse and he immediately ignored it.

Agatha heaved a long-suffering sigh and said, "You drank what I _thought_ was a prototype jaegerdraught. I thought it didn't _work_ because nothing _happened_ to you!"

"Hy vas sick for seven monffs!" Moloch yelled at her. "My teef fell out!"

Agatha peered at Moloch's mouth, then pointed out, "You have teeth now."

"Dey're sharp and Hy ken't speak viffout _biting_ myself--shut _op_ , Castle!" Moloch added, to head off the Castle's snark.

Agatha just smiled, hopeful and breathless with excitement.

"But you didn't die."

Moloch growled, but she was right. He hadn't died.

"Hy vant to _fight_ someting."

"Try Gkika's?"

Moloch tried Gkika's. It was surprisingly satisfying.

A year after Moloch first drank Agatha's new jaegerdraught, she asked him to come talk to potential new jaegers. There were one hundred and forty-eight that first trial.

He told them they were idiots and the jaegerdraught would suffocate them if they didn't swallow fast. Then he explained what he'd gone through.

None refused the draught.

None died.

Forty-six puked up the wobbly chunk of jaegerdraught, plus whatever they'd had for lunch.

Of those, thirty-seven tried to swallow it a second time.

Eighteen succeeded on the second try.

Then 120 new jaegers went home, looking no different than they'd arrived.

Moloch became the impromptu touchstone for the new jaegers, who'd all fallen ill two days later and stayed that way for a few months.

Still none died.

Most were severely inconvenienced by the sickness, though. They grew hair and horns and claws and their teeth fell out and came back in. From the outside, Moloch could see how his symptoms had been missed.

After a year, Agatha's first wave of new jaegers were ready to serve.

After five years, Moloch found himself arguing with Gkika and Higgs and the other jaeger generals about how to integrate Agatha's jaegers with the rest of the jaeger corps, because they were undeniably _different._

After a decade, Moloch found himself a young general in charge of the new jaegers.

After five decades, the new jaegers outnumbered the old.

After a century, Moloch found himself talking to Agatha's grandchildren about what she'd been like when she was young.

After five centuries, it finally occurred to Moloch that Mechanicsburg was, and would forever more be his home.


End file.
